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Open plan School or closed classroom

Louursula

My 4yr old son has HFA. He is very sensitive to noise and hates crowded environments. I recently moved him to a School with a base (special education classroom), sensory room and closed classrooms as I thought he would benefit from these things. This School is out with our village. I did have in our local school and had small concerns but nothing to major. Had to push for use of visual aids social stories. I am finding I am having the same battles with new School. They are actually more resistent to use visual timetable with him. I am worried that I am adding more stressed into the family by taking him out of our community and it would be calmer to walk to School and have friends around our home. But my question is what do people think of closed classrooms versus open planned. Base unit versus special ed teacher in normal classroom?.

  • Hi - if your child is noise-sensitive then I would presume open plan wd be worse.  Also it could seem more chaotic to him, regardless of noise sensitivity.  It seems to me from your post that neither school is meeting his needs.  I'm presuming he has a diagnosis, as you say he's hfa, so does he have a statement of educational needs + the necessary support at school?  Also if he does have support, is that person trained in autism + aware of how it affects your son as an individual?  Many people : teachers, friends, professional carers etc have no training/understanding or minimal training/understanding of autism but they think they know what to do.  From previous experience (my son's in his 20s) I seriously say to anyone who asks that good intentions are not good enough.  You need to find the right environment for your child with staff (of whatever description) who understand him + how autism affects him personally.